Greenwood chief responds to claims crime has doubled in city

Greenwood’s police chief is pushing back against claims crime has skyrocketed within the city over the last few years.

Citing data from the police department’s crime map, people both on and off social media have made claims that crime has doubled in the city. The map, which has data from 2019 to January 2023, appears to show that non-violent crime has gone up since 2019.

The crime data map shows burglary, criminal mischief, suspicious persons/circumstances and theft reports, all typically non-violent property crimes. In 2019, there were 1,212 incidents and in 2020 there were 1,146 incidents. The number increased to 1,310 by 2021, and last year the number of reports more than doubled to 2,506, according to data from the crime map.

However, Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison says the crime map was not designed to be used as a yearly comparison of crime trends.

“The idea … wasn’t to give any type of crime trending stats, it was to show people, in real-time, where crimes where the property crimes were occurring,” Ison said.

Officials also use the map to determine what areas they could focus more resources for patrols in order to prevent property crimes, he said.

Data provided by the Greenwood Police Department shows that property crime trended downward for 2022. Additionally, violent crime remained at a similar level to 2021 — despite a record number of homicides in 2022.

Property crime

The map, which was started under former police chief John Laut in 2019, has had a varied number of searchable offenses since it was first implemented. In 2020, there were 14 searchable offenses, and in 2021, there were 16 searchable offenses. By 2022, the number dropped to 10, Ison said.

The reason why the numbers appeared to have doubled for 2022 is because Ison asked the department’s crime analyst to add suspicious circumstances/persons as an offense for that year.

“I wanted to kind of create an overlay to see if there was any correlation to where we were getting suspicious person calls and where these property crimes are actually occurring,” Ison said. “That number, which is by far the largest variable in this list of crimes that are on that crime map, that’s what caused the numbers to increase so much in 2022.”

Using the same offenses as the crime map does — burglary, criminal mischief, suspicious persons/circumstances and thefts — data from the Greenwood Police Department shows property crimes have actually decreased from a high of 3,643 in 2020 to a low of 3,190 in 2022. In 2021, there were 3,242 reported property crimes.

The largest property crime category was suspicious persons/circumstances, which routinely surpassed over 1,500 reports. These types of crimes are usually one of the top calls police respond to in Greenwood annually, Ison said.

Suspicious person/circumstances calls are often not related to actual criminal activity but are people calling 911 to report they see someone who they think is up to no good.

“They’re calls where (people are) requesting officers to go check on someone or something because it doesn’t look right in the area,” he said.

In 2020, there were 2,047 of these types of calls. By 2022 though, the number had dropped to 1,699, data shows.

Violent crime

In terms of violent crime, data from the last three years show fairly static numbers.

There were 884 violent crime incidents — including battery, domestic battery murder, attempted murder, sex crimes and robbery — reported to Greenwood police in 2020. While this number did rise to 896 in 2021, the number did drop a little bit to 894 in 2022, according to GPD data.

For homicides, the number went from one in 2020 to six in 2022. There were none reported in 2021, data shows.

There were also 2 justifiable homicides in 2022, meaning the person was killed in self-defense, data shows.

Four of those deaths — three homicides and one justifiable homicide — are from the Greenwood Park Mall shooting, Ison said.

The increase in the number of attempted homicides is also attributed to the mall shooting. The number skyrocketed from one in 2020 and two in 2021 to 16 in 2022, data shows.

The increase is because everyone who was in the food court at the time the gunman opened fire was considered a potential victim. Most of the 16 attempted homicides for the year stem from that day, he said.

FBI crime data

Data from the FBI could also appear to show that crime is increasing in the city. However, the agency recently changed the way crimes are reported, Ison said.

Nearly every law enforcement agency in the country is required to report crimes to the FBI. For the last few decades, this data has been reported through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, or UCR.

However, in 2021, the FBI changed reporting standards. Now crimes are required to be reported through the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS.

The biggest change with the switch is what crimes are reported on the FBI’s end. The UCR was based on a hierarchy of offenses, meaning that only the most serious offense listed for an incident was reported. Other, less serious offenses that were related to the incident were not included in the UCR, Ison said.

Under NIBRS, all offenses for an incident are required to be listed, regardless of the level.

“Most of them now are listed, which gives the illusion across the country that crime is just skyrocketing if you compare pre-2021 to post-2021,” he said. “But that’s really not necessarily the case as much as our reporting requirements are now different.”

Responding to rumors

Despite claims posted on social media, Ison says the department’s mileage caps are not limiting the number of hours they can patrol nor are they causing crime to be higher.

“This is absolutely not true,” Ison said.

The mileage caps GPD implemented limit officers’ monthly personal usage of their take-home police vehicles. Officials capped total mileage at 2,000 miles a month due to rising fuel costs last year, Ison said.

The city pays for the gas, regardless of whether the officer is actively on patrol. Even with the caps, officers still have plenty of mileage for personal use, he said.

“Assuming they take no time off, on an average month officers are scheduled to work 15 shifts,” Ison said. “So assuming that each officer drives 100 miles per shift, that still leaves them 500 miles/month for personal use.”

The caps are designed to be temporary because of instability with fuel prices. If gas prices continue to trend lower, police officials will remove the restriction, he said.

Where things stand now

For the crimes GPD is seeing across the city right now, the majority of people arrested by Greenwood officers are people who don’t live in Johnson County or Greenwood.

“The arrests that we are making … 60 to 65% every month are non-city residents,” Ison said.

While property crimes are trending down slightly compared to years past, the numbers are still over 3,000. A higher number of property crimes is expected because the city has many places to shop and dine, Ison said.

“We have one of the largest shopping malls in the state and all kinds of restaurants, store, shops, boutiques,” Ison said. “So a big part of our problem is commercial theft, shoplifting.”

Last year saw the largest number of reported shoplifting incidents reported in several years. In 2020, 300 shoplifting incidents were reported. This number dropped to 251 in 2021 before nearly doubling to 439, data shows.

City is safe

While the number of homicides reported within city limits last year was the highest ever, Ison says the city is still safe. When looking closely at the incidents, every one involved a Greenwood resident committing homicide.

“Every one of the perpetrators were Greenwood residents, and most of them were domestic or neighbor-related outside of the mall — which the person who committed that was a Greenwood resident,” Ison said. “That accounted for four homicides, including the shooter.”

Ison says last year was unlike any other the city has had, but he does not consider the increase in homicides an ongoing trend.

“I think it was an anomaly … Greenwood’s relatively safe,” Ison said.

Like many other agencies, GPD is experiencing staffing shortages in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and the “Defund the Police” movement. Departments across the country are competing for a smaller pool of applicants because of this, but hope is on the horizon for GPD.

During the current hiring process, GPD received nearly 137 applications. The department plans to hire at least 12 new officers in April, Ison said.

“Although we face some hard times, we have weathered the storms,” he said. “Our officers are very resilient. They’re doing a fantastic job, and the citizens of Greenwood are in good hands.”

By the end of this year, Ison expects to have all 77 budgeted full-time officer positions filled.

“We will be fully staffed by the end of this year, come hell or high water,” he said.